On the morning of September 17, 2025, I woke with a start, pounded out a column about America’s bipartisan love affair with censorship, and filed it before the coffee cooled.
Hours later, the Jimmy Kimmel story hit like a cymbal crash: ABC pulled “Jimmy Kimmel Live” indefinitely after the F.C.C. chair blasted his monologue about the politics surrounding Charlie Kirk’s killing and publicly hinted at regulatory “remedies.” Affiliates fell in line.
I stared at my draft and thought: good grief, this is exactly the moment I’m writing about—when powerful people decide speech is too risky to tolerate. This isn’t about whether Kimmel is funny. I’m a 2013 “Colbert Report” person.
Taste isn’t the issue—power is. At all levels of government, from officials of both the Democratic and Republican parties, we are seeing the same anti-speech reflex play out.
Pam Bondi, the conservative U.S. attorney general, and Marqueece Harris-Dawson, the liberal president of the Los Angeles City Council, share a dirty secret: they both want speech that’s easy to manage—and they’re willing to treat the Constitution like a dimmer switch to get there. Different jerseys, same play: manage the message.
Bondi’s move is national. She floated the idea that “hate speech” can be prosecuted and suggested the Justice Department might punish a print shop that declines to produce Charlie Kirk vigil posters. She wobbled the next day—true threats are illegal, she clarified—but the point landed. The goal isn’t law; it’s message discipline. Make people fear the microphone, and the crowd gets quieter.
Harris-Dawson’s maneuver is municipal. The council packaged a profanity ban as “decorum,” expanding the power to eject critics for the wrong words—sometimes right before a vote. Last week a deputy city attorney went further, claiming a speaker can’t “repeat herself,” as if the First Amendment comes with a punch card. Same trick, different jersey: call messy speech dangerous, then write rules to sweep it away.
The law doesn’t bend that way. The First Amendment has no “hate-speech” carve-out. Government can punish true threats and incitement; it can’t criminalize insults. And here in the Ninth Circuit, you remove a speaker only for actual disruption — shouting over others, refusing to yield the mic — not for viewpoint, tone, or repetition. Courts have been blunt for years: disruption means interference with the meeting, not hurt feelings. If even a crude silent gesture has drawn constitutional protection, fragile egos don’t justify a gag.
I’ve done my time at that lectern. City Hall is a raw stage for democracy: scholars with binders, neighbors with gripes, gadflies with grievances sharpened to a point. Some are rude. Some repeat. Most are brief. That’s the deal. A housekeeper on her lunch break gets a minute to confront officials who make more in a month than she does in a year. Democracy promises that minute, not elegance.
Yet the council keeps shrinking it. They dodge hearings by pulling items out of committee, batch votes, and sprint through public comment like a hotel checkout. “Decorum” becomes a magic word that turns dissent into disorder. It isn’t about safety; it’s about controlling the message.
And yes, culture echoes government. ABC’s decision came hours after the F.C.C. chair publicly leaned on broadcasters, praising affiliates that pre-empted Kimmel and urging others to “push back.” That’s not a content debate; that’s a licensing gun on the table. The instinct to “quiet the room” isn’t confined to hearing chambers. Quiet is seductive. It flatters power. It promises calm. But quiet isn’t consent.
There’s a simpler way to keep order that doesn’t trample rights: start on time. Post clear agendas. Let people speak before you vote on the items they came to discuss. Enforce even time limits. If someone truly disrupts — won’t stop, drowns out others — escort them out and move on. But don’t police content. Don’t invent a ban on “repetition” inside a sixty-second slot. Don’t pretend the cure for coarse speech is a swear jar.
Bondi and Harris-Dawson both say they’re defending order. Fine — put order on the clock, not the voice. Manage meetings, not messages. The cure for raw speech has always been more speech — louder, sharper, repeated until it sinks in. If officials can’t stomach sixty seconds of discomfort, the public isn’t the problem.
Eric Preven is a Los Angeles–based writer, producer, and SoCal Journalism Award winner.
